


Comes and Goes

by damalur



Series: Depth Over Distance [3]
Category: Psych
Genre: Arguing, Established Relationship, F/M, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 06:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1848409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an elephant in the room, and the name of that elephant is "your partner's plummeting self-worth."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Probably won't make any sense if you haven't read [Depth Over Distance](http://damalur.dreamwidth.org/tag/depth+over+distance). This story owes much to [slybrunette](http://slybrunette.tumblr.com/), who puts up with all of my virtual screaming and sobbing. She does a lot for my creativity and very little to pull me out of this terrible, life-destroying spiral, and I am _totally okay with that._

Lassiter couldn't find his deodorant.

"Did you check the medicine cabinet?" Juliet called. She was in the shower and washing her hair, which meant he'd answered the same question three times; she kept asking because, with her head under the water, she couldn't hear a word he said.

"Yes, I checked the damn medicine cabinet! The damn medicine cabinet was the first place I looked!"

She stuck her head out the door. There was a trail of suds running down the side of her neck; he was tempted to forget the deodorant and climb back in the shower, even though he was already in his pajamas for the night. She was all kind of...slick, and shiny; even her eyelashes were wet.

"You don't have to yell, Carlton," she said.

"I was not—" He looked up. She was smirking at him.

"Ha ha, very funny. You're dripping."

"Oops!" she said, and ducked back into the shower. She started up a running commentary on the biking trip she and her friend Val were planning for next month; Lassiter had extracted a sworn promise from her that they wouldn't be gone longer than two days, although he still wasn't sure if that was because she didn't want to be away for any longer or because forty-eight hours was the most she was willing to go without access to indoor plumbing.

He looked again in the medicine cabinet. His deodorant had mysteriously appeared in the exact spot he usually stored it. He was willing to admit the possibility that he had not, in fact, checked in the medicine cabinet before beginning his witch-hunt.

Juliet was still talking, so rather than cut her off he leaned against the doorframe and listened to her list maintenance projects for her mountain bike. Her figure wasn't much more than a flesh-shaped blur through the warped glass, but he could tell when she was almost finished by the way she leaned over, cranked the water all the way to cold, and did a little jig of surprise.

She shot out of the shower fast, like she always did, one arm clutching her torso to preserve some warmth and the other squeezing water from her hair. If he wasn't careful, she'd make a beeline to him and get him all wet and cold, so he intercepted her with a towel, spun her around, and pointed her back at the shower. Her teeth were chattering.

"I still have no idea why you insist on a mild torture technique at the end of every shower," he said.

She squeezed another deluge of cold water out of her hair. It landed on his foot. "It's invigorating!" she said, totally oblivious to his now-damp socks. "Although come to think of it, it's not as important now that my hair isn't so long, but it's hard to break the habit."

Lassiter stripped off his socks, balled them up, and decided going barefoot was the better part of valor. "What the hell does that have to do with your hair?"

"When you have really long hair—remember how long my hair was when we met?"

He did; it had been nearly down to her waist.

"You have to take care of it, you know. Cold rinses, wide-toothed combs, braiding it back before bed. Past your bra-strap the ends are years and years old, you know, and you can't repair damage—"

He cleared his throat. "Wait," he said. "Is that why sometimes you stop to braid your hair in the middle of—"

"It hurts when it gets caught, okay! And my scalp is really sensitive."

"That's not the impression you give me when I—"

She smacked him in the face with her wet towel. Since the towel was no longer on her body, Lassiter still awarded himself the advantage.

"Hey," she added, "that reminds me, what do you want to watch tonight?" It was Wednesday; Wednesday nights, or at least the Wednesday nights that didn't involve work, were dedicated to hair-drying and movies.

 _"A Fistful of Dollars,"_ he said.

"No."

_"Dirty Harry?"_

"No." She repossessed her towel.

_"Sweet Home—"_

"Ugh, we watched that last week!"

"I am not watching _Die Hard_ again," Lassiter said. She brushed companionably against him as she exited to the master bedroom. He did not let himself be distracted. "We watched _that_ last week, too."

"But you love _Die Hard,"_ she argued.

"I don't love it that much. Pick something else."

_"Die Hard with a Vengeance."_

"That's out of order—"

"Oh my god, okay. _Die Hard 2_ , final offer, and then I watch ESPN while you fall asleep on the couch."

"I'm making popcorn," Lassiter said, begrudgingly, although it was true that one of them often fell asleep before they even made it through the end credits. It wasn't always him, though. 

He did make popcorn: in the microwave, not on the stove, which would have outraged his grandmother, god rest her, but he melted butter to pour over it and shook a little of the garlic salt Juliet liked over the top. She finished dressing and joined him in the kitchen in time to pick out the wine. He carried the popcorn and napkins, she carried the wine glasses, and they retired to the living room, to domesticity, and to the serene white noise of television.

The cats were curled up on his side of the couch, a leminiscate of white and gray fur so closely entwined it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. "Move," Lassiter barked.

Thumper didn't stir. Flower out a pathetic noise of inquiry and rolled over to expose her belly.

"Not falling for it. Shoo," Lassiter said.

The cat contingent remained firmly entrenched. Maybe if he slowly sat down on them—

Juliet laughed, set the wine glasses on the table, and scooped one feline up under each arm. When she displaced them to the floor, they both gave her looks of deep disapproval and alarm, but they retreated to the cat tree that had mysteriously sprouted in the corner of the living room without counterattack.

And then, of course, Juliet rendered the whole campaign pointless when she plopped on the floor and produced a bottle of nail polish. "Go ahead and start," she said. "I just want to put a new top coat on my toes, it'll be a jiffy."

Lassiter nudged her with his foot. "You're closer to the DVD player," he prompted.

"You have longer arms."

"You are...fine," he said.

They watched the movie. Juliet painted her toes. Lassiter mechanically shoveled popcorn into his mouth, sipped at his wine, and forgot to follow the plot. Juliet's hair was drying in that thick cloud of fluff that was its natural state before she tamed it with her arsenal of brightly-colored bottles; she was humming under her breath while she worked, although the thread of music caught in her head didn't prevent her from laughing every time Bruce Willis made a smartass remark. Her wine glass was sitting on the ground, inches from her toes, which this week were a bright yellow.

"Hey," she said, and tilted her head back against the couch cushion.

"What?" said Lassiter.

"Kiss me," said Juliet.

He leaned over and kissed her obediently; her mouth was warm, an odd mélange of flavors, but her lips were soft and familiar. She was reaching up to twine an arm around his neck when he pulled away and stood up.

"Carlton, where—"

"I'm going to bed," he said.

-

The next day was another dull trudge. He was out of bed and out the door before Juliet stirred; they usually rode to the station together, but not always, and he had a high-profile case that demanded attention.

He did some paperwork; Kekoa asked a question; the question involved paperwork. He fielded calls from the press, five or six in a row at mid-morning, and met Juliet's eyes across the room. She smiled at him, and he looked away.

Contrary to popular belief, he didn't always enjoy talking to reporters, but in a murder investigation with as many unknowns as he was currently facing, it was better to keep the lines of communication open. Reporters were nosy and often willing to commit minor legal offenses to obtain information. Lassiter didn't look kindly on lawbreaking of any degree, but he'd rather have them share that information with him rather than sit on it until they needed another spectacular headline.

At noon, Spencer dropped by to make a joke at Lassiter's expense. This was not unusual. Last week he had stopped by for the express purpose of upbraiding Lassiter's choice in shoes. In fact, yesterday—

Lassiter and Kekoa had been giving a rundown on the facts in the open murder case. The victim was a black female, 26, found shot to death in the very large, very expensive home she shared with a husband two decades her senior. He'd been out of the country at the time and was only now on his way back, so they hadn't yet had a chance to interview him.

"Could he have indirectly had anything to do with her death?" McNab had asked.

Kekoa had shot a look at Lassiter before shrugging. "We don't know, but we'll be talking to him as soon as he's in the country again. Maybe he's genuinely distraught, or maybe he's overly distraught to cover up his involvement, or maybe he's neither because he married her so he'd have someone to push him around in his wheelchair when he's an old geezer."

And then Spencer had said, "So kind of like Jules and Lassie, then?"

An appreciative chuckle had run through the room. Lassiter had let it slide; he didn't necessarily mind the squad having a laugh at his expense, and while it rankled that Spencer had been the source of the joke, one look at Juliet's utter exasperation had been enough to settle his first impulse, which was often to hit someone until they stopped moving. He was a lot better at stifling that impulse at forty than he had been at eighteen, but it never faded away entirely.

Today he fobbed Spencer off on McNab and went to confer with Kekoa. The husband was en route, due to arrive in another twenty or thirty minutes, and they had to put their game plan together before they had him in interrogation. He and Kekoa played well off each other, although not as well as he and Juliet had—they could play good cop/bad cop until the cows came home, let themselves into the barn, and sang themselves to sleep.

"I vote we toss him in there and let him stew for an hour," Kekoa said. "Make him think we've got something on him."

"We don't know if he's the nervous type."

She shrugged. "Then he gets pissed that we've made him wait. Come on, Lassiter, you can dissect his body language through the one-way while I file my nails and eat bon-bons. This guy's our best suspect. It's almost always the husband. We get him to crack, we don't have to work through the weekend."

There wasn't any point to arguing with her logic; she was right, and she knew it. They had no reason to coddle the suspect to ensure compliance. The crime scene was clear-cut but devoid of any helpful DNA residue, which certainly didn't eliminate the husband from the pool of suspects. Oldest story in the world. Well, almost. If there had been a brother...

"Fine," he said. "We'll throw him in lock-up, see how he reacts, work out something from there. Did you get those lab results back yet?"

"Nope," she said.

"Hn."

"Cheer up, man," she said. "At least we've got something interesting. I've been solving car robberies for three months, I get tired of teenagers pulling crap."

Lassiter made a face to express his disapproval of teenagers. _His_ children would never be adolescents—no, they would skip right from grade-schoolers to graduate students. Or maybe he'd order them to stop aging at eight. Eight seemed like a good age. Old enough to play T-ball, young enough to still adore their parents. Provided he ever had children; the possibility was starting to feel remote.

"Oh look," said Kekoa, "there's our bucko now." In the lobby was Daniel Winwood, of the something-or-other Winwoods, old money, new media. He looked haggard, slouched over like a man of seventy, and his responses were slow; he blinked hard at Sergeant Allen before he responded. Caucasian male, 46, graying, decent suit, no luggage—probably left it in the car—not carrying a weapon, or if he was, good at hiding it. Lassiter felt a premature hate roiling in his gut and tossed it out, tossed out his frustration, concentrated on the job. Men who killed their partners were the lowest of the low, right up there with rapists, blackmailers, and anyone who hated Reagan, but until they had something concrete on Winwood, objectivity was king.

Lassiter let Kekoa lead; she might not have pulled off the "good cop" vibe, but she was more laid-back than he was, and most men tended to find women unthreatening. Which was a mistake, particularly since Kekoa was nearly Lassiter's height and just as vicious in a fight, but it was one she, like most woman cops, occasionally used to her advantage. He'd seen Juliet pull the same trick a hundred times, and the obvious and instinctual disdain of her never failed to irritate him.

Winwood was a wreck. He was cordial enough when Kekoa approached him, and totally docile as they led him down the hall to the interrogation room, but he was also in an obvious daze; his reactions were not only halting but disoriented, and his eyes were red-rimmed. If it was an act, it was a good one, although Lassiter had seen plenty of good acts before. Hell, he'd seen entire three-ringed circuses, liars so skilled they could juggle a dozen stories at once while jumping through a flaming hoop. 

They sat him down at the table and told him they'd be with him in just a moment. He kept asking things: how they'd found her, if they had any suspects, if she had been in pain when she'd died. What time. Where was she. Who'd found her. Why she had been—

When they were back on the safe side of the two-way mirror, Lassiter said, "Lot of questions."

"Yeah," said Kekoa. "If it's an act, it's a good one, but maybe too good, you know—he asked us why she'd been murdered three times, said he had no idea who would have wanted to kill her. We never said she'd been murdered, only that she was found dead."

At his table, Winwood put his head down. After a couple of minutes, his shoulders began to heave. No sound; he cried noiselessly, but Lassiter would have liked to see the man's face. Real tears? Could he fake that? Would he want to? Half the time, suspects confessed because they were wrecked, completely consumed with the idea that they were going to be found out, that somebody _knew_. The ones who weren't complete psychos needed that relief, that safety of knowing everything was all over. If Winwood wanted to confess, they'd have an easy time of it. If he was a sociopath, Lassiter and Kekoa would have a lot harder time extracting anything both genuine and usable. There was always a third option, of course, that he was innocent, but like Kekoa said—it was almost always the husband.

"Coffee?" said Lassiter.

"Sure," said Kekoa. 

They shot the bull by the coffee bar for twenty minutes. Juliet was at her desk across the bullpen; she was on the phone but probably on hold, judging by the rapid-fire clicking that meant she was probably playing solitaire or minecraft. Halfway through Lassiter's first cup she got bored. Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed and propped her chin on her fist so she could make faces at him. She had a singularly expressive face, did O'Hara.

Lassiter raised his eyebrows at her and turned back to Kekoa, who was complaining about her wife.

"I hate those damn academic mixers," she grumbled. "It's all geezers—even Jane is a geezer. I love her, but she's a geezer. Do I want to be forced into a forty-minute conversation about fucking poetry while everyone drinks fancy wine and flings stealth insults around? Fuck no. I hate wine."

"I recall that you love wine," Lassiter said.

"Yeah, well, I hate fancy Doctor Snobass's wine. It's been almost an hour, think we ought to get back to our friend?"

"You know, I think I'll bring him a cup of coffee," said Lassiter, and poured the dregs in the cup. He did not add cream and sugar.

Nevertheless, he was offered a shaky thank-you when he slid it across the table to Winwood, who cupped his hands around it but did not drink. Kekoa leaned back in her chair and sipped at her cup. Lassiter was staring out the window, like he wasn't paying attention, like this was routine, like it wasn't important. Winwood let out a sigh.

"Sorry about that," said Kekoa. "Shall we begin?"

They kept him there for three hours. The first hour was easy enough; no slip-ups, very forthcoming, either the reality or a polished veneer of cooperation. He didn't flinch when Kekoa read him his Miranda rights, either. Lassiter stayed quiet, playing bored-and-apathetic while Kekoa played bored-but-professional. They gave him another break when his attention started to waver, more from exhaustion than from any resistance. By hour three he was on the verge of tears again; his hands, when they finally lifted the cup of cold coffee, were trembling.

Lassiter picked his moment well. "You said you hadn't heard from your wife's brother in how long?"

"I—six months," Winwood said. "About that, I don't know exactly how long."

"Funny." Lassiter pretended to flip through his notes again. Juliet would've been better at this; nobody ever saw her coming. _Everyone_ saw Lassiter coming, which was part of the reason he was usually so crap at undercover work. "I could've sworn you said you talked to him before you left the country last week."

"Did—did I?"

"Oh, come on, Lassiter," said Kekoa. "Cut him a break, his wife just died. Your wife dies, you think you're gonna remember every phone call you get?"

"Yeah, cry me a river." He pulled out a photograph from the back of the file and let Winwood get a look at it. It was a mugshot. "You know your wife's brother has a record? Been arrested twice for possession, once for armed robbery. Did three months in prison, got out early. He must've had a top-notch lawyer for that one."

"I don't know all the details," Winwood said. "I was aware he'd had some problems with drugs, but Tally didn't tell me everything."

"But they were close," said Lassiter. "Tally and her brother."

"Yes. They—yes."

"And Mike did how many stints in rehab?"

There was a beat. "Two," said Winwood. "That I'm aware of."

"You know what's interesting to me, Kekoa?" said Lassiter. "What's interesting to me is that Mikey, despite never holding down a job for more than eight months, managed to get himself into some kind of high-dollar facility that looks more like a resort than a rehab center. Isn't that interesting?"

Kekoa crossed her arms. "A man's gotta help out his family, his wife's family. That's not unreasonable."

"You know what else is interesting?" said Lassiter, and pulled out the phone records he'd wheedled out of the local law enforcement in Dublin. "Mr. Winwood here received a telephone call from California in his hotel suite about twenty minutes after his wife's time of death. When did you say you last talked to your wife's brother again?"

"I don't—I didn't—"

"Because what I think," said Lassiter, "is that you and Mikey were working together. Maybe you paid him off, maybe he had reasons of his own and dragged you into his game—"

"Nobody wanted her dead, and I swear to god if you think that, if you think she deserved to die—"

"Tally and Mike were close, weren't they?" said Kekoa. "But we know Mike could be unstable, it's noted in his corrections file. We have a psychiatric report from the state penitentiary that says he can be volatile, that he experiences mood swings, and that he sometimes acts rashly."

"So maybe Mikey whacks her, panics, doesn't know who to call, not a friend in the world, remembers you complaining about the old ball-and-chain, and rings you to help him cover it all up," said Lassiter. "That it? Because we haven't been able to lay a hand on Mikey. Someone's funding him, and I think that someone is you."

"No—"

"Did you ask him to kill her?" Lassiter said. He leaned forward now; there was blood in the air, and it was all he could do not to bay at the scent. "Get tired of being tied down to one woman? She wasn't a lot of fun, she spent your money on her good-for-nothing brother, she was always riding you about greener business practices, never went out, didn't like being armcandy. Were you looking to trade up to a newer model?"

 _"No!"_ Winwood said. He was on his feet, hands flat on the table, and Lassiter and Kekoa bolted up out of instinct; but the outburst drained the last of Winwood's willpower, and he sat back down and put his face in his hands.

"I didn't want her dead," he said. "I don't want her—I want her back, with me. Here." His voice was low and muffled, and he stopped to press the heels of his palms into his eye sockets. "Mike was—you're right, unstable, but he was her little brother. She always tried to take care of him, that was the most important thing, and—"

Kekoa shot Lassiter a look and sank back to her chair as she let her hand fall away from her sidearm. Lassiter remained standing.

"When he called me," said Winwood, "he was half out of his mind. All he said was that he'd hurt her, that he was afraid. I told him to—to leave, to get out of there, I told him where we had some cash hidden and then I told him to call an ambulance when he was somewhere safe. I guess he...but he wouldn't." He laughed, or sobbed; maybe it was the same thing. "I didn't know for sure she was dead until you called. I—god. The only thing she ever wanted was to take care of him. He needed help, but she said that being locked up wasn't the kind of help he needed."

"Would he have murdered her intentionally?"

"No," said Winwood. "Mike's not—he isn't right in the—but he loved her. God, and she loved him so much, I can't believe—"

"And you let a murderer run off into the sunset because boo-hoo, your wife just _loved_ him so much?" Lassiter sneered. "Grow up." He slammed his way out of the room. Maybe it was part of the act. He let himself believe it was, but he also needed—

Juliet was still on the phone, or was on the phone again; she was taking notes as she spoke, the handset trapped between her ear and shoulder as she wrote. He could tell from across the room that her pen was some kind of brightly-colored affair with a plastic daisy affixed to the end; those touches had started showing up a couple of years ago, once she had settled into the department, once her probation had ended...once she'd started to feel comfortable with him.

He was railroaded out of his reverie by Spencer, of all people, who blindsided him with the force of an oncoming steam engine. "Lassie! Lassie, you are just going to be so delighted when you hear this, I have all kinds of"—he lowered his voice— _"breaking information."_

"Not here!" Lassiter snapped, before Spencer started spewing sensitive intel all over the place. Of course, what Spencer considered "intelligence" was wildly variable, but there was always a chance he'd dug up something useful.

Juliet's partner, Nadine Young, was in the break room eating a bagel, but she knew how to keep her mouth shut, and Lassiter liked her more than he liked most people. He hauled Spencer inside, closed the door behind him, folded his arms, and said, "Let's hear it."

"It was the brother," Spencer said.

"I know that."

"Oookaaaaay," Spencer said. "Then you know that he called Danny Boy after he shot his sister, right? I don't know yet what would make him agree to help out his brother-in-law, but if you give me five minutes, _five minutes_ , alone with this guy, I can get it out of him."

"No," said Lassiter.

"Look, you know I'm just going to sneak in and talk to him later if you kick me out now, and I know that, so why don't we skip the sneaking and get right to the down and dirty."

Oh, for the love of—the absolute last thing he needed was to have Spencer go gallivanting in to play headgames with Winwood. The man was already on the verge of a nervous collapse, and if he wasn't handled delicately, he could very well tip over into a more extreme reaction—whether that meant helping Mike Shaw disappear entirely or suicide, Lassiter wasn't sure. Both, maybe.

"No, Spencer. I mean it. We have this case well in hand, and _you_ aren't even approved to stick your nose in on this one. Get out of here. Go pester Guster. Leave Winwood alone."

"Uh, okay," said Spencer. "Is this the part where I pretend to comply, and then you pretend you won?"

"No," Lassiter snarled, "this is the part where you _do as you're told_ and leave my case alone. I'm not kidding about this one, Spencer—you interfere, you could cost us the murderer."

"Whoa, I think you spit on me a little there. Very becoming behavior for an officer of a law. Did they teach you that at the academy?"

Lassiter took a deep breath, held it, and thought about waking up that morning. Juliet had still been asleep, sprawled haphazardly across the center of the bed like a starfish; he'd been half under her with an arm wrapped around her waist. His entire shoulder had gone numb from the weight of her head, and his elbow was still out of whack, but her face had been burrowed against his neck.

"Look," he said. "Spencer. I know you dislike me personally, but you need to respect this department—"

"Oh, come on, that's bull—I liked you fine until you took Jules away from me!"

And

everything

froze.

The stillness was only a facade; in his ears, Lassiter could hear his heart pounding, he could feel a rising pressure in his throat, he could hear Detective Young breathing, and he could hear Spencer swallow. The room was cold, and motionless, but all he could see was red.

"She was never yours to begin with," he spit back.

"Excuse me?" Spencer was taking him seriously now, at least, hands out of his pockets, facing him head-on. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I mean—" He took a step forward and then reined himself in before he fastened his hands around Spencer's throat. "She was using you to get over me, not the other way around—and thank god it failed. You never deserved her. You never deserved one _minute_ of her."

"What, and you do? I guess she just has so much _fun_ hauling your grumpy ass around and explaining your romantic history to her family. Has she told her mom that you were her boss?"

"Spencer."

"You two just have so much in common, Lassie, sometimes I forget that you're thirteen years older than she is—she probably loves taking you on double dates, you fit in with all her girlfriends. Or hey, maybe overbearing and professionally mediocre is what she likes now. People change, don't they."

 _"Spencer,"_ he said. His voice was so low it grated his throat. "Stop. Walk away."

"Can't deny it, can you?" said Spencer. "You know what they say—"

"Shawn." Young was there, taking Spencer by the arm, pulling him away. "Shawn, come on. Cut it out before someone does something they can't take back. Come on, man."

Lassiter was aware that his entire body had drawn up, that he'd turned sideways and shifted his weight, and that his right hand was curled into a ball with the thumb tucked on top.

"I—" Spencer said, and then he looked away. "Yeah. Yeah." He left, and Young went with him, and then it was only Lassiter, alone in the room.

He shut his eyes. He uncurled his fist. And he breathed.

-

That afternoon he drove over to the county sheriff's department to follow up on a case he'd been working on with a couple of the deputies. Some nut was mailing razor blades to residents all over the area; usually Lassiter would've said it was an angry teenager with too much time and too little parental supervision, and he would've been right, but whoever was behind this was smart about it. They'd found no prints or DNA evidence and no pattern to the mailings at all.

He stayed until late, combing through interview transcripts and trying to find a nexus, either geographically or in terms of shared traits. At eight-thirty he checked his phone—three missed calls, all from Juliet—packed up the files, and drove home.

She was sitting on the couch when he walked in. The TV was playing some network drama she liked, but the volume was dialed back; he only caught the edges of conversation.

"I was worried about you," she said, which was how he knew she was pissed off.

"Had some work at the sheriff's," he said, and loosened his tie. He should apologize for that, for not at least messaging her back, but he couldn't bring himself to keep up the act. She clearly knew that something had gone down with Spencer, which was no doubt the result of Young's interference, and there was no reason to pretend everything was fine.

"Carlton—" She switched off the television, stood up but didn't come closer to him, and wrapped her arms around her torso. "Nadine told me what happened with you and Shawn—"

"I bet she did."

"Don't you dare take it out on her for telling me. Don't you..." Her voice wavered, and that was when he realized she wasn't angry, when he realized she was deeply, confusingly _upset_.

"How could you?" she said. "Arguing over me like I'm a piece of meat? And with _Shawn?_ Nadine said you were about to start swinging—"

"He started it," Lassiter snapped. His tie was hanging around his neck, but he abandoned the thought of taking off his jacket or his shoulder rig.

"I so do not care. You were in the _middle of the station_ , which, in case you're forgotten, is where I have to go to work _every single day._ How could you? How could you use that like a, like some kind of—I expected better of you."

"Go ahead—ream me out," Lassiter snapped. "It's not like you're going to hold Spencer to the same standard—"

"Of course I'm not!"

And—

_Of course—_

She was still talking. "I don't know if I can even have this conversation with you. God, Carlton, _everyone_ saw the two of you fighting. You just had to jump into it with him, didn't you? In case you've forgotten, I'm not some kind of trophy awarded to the manliest—"

"You don't want to talk about this?" he said. "Fine."

And then he turned around.

And he walked back out the door.

And he thought to himself, _Of course—_


	2. Chapter 2

She was still surprised when he didn't come home that night. This was by far the biggest fight they'd ever had, but she'd worked so hard to convince him that he didn't have to exile himself just because they were arguing—and it clearly hadn't stuck.

That had taken a lot of work; the first time that they'd had a spat after she moved in with him, Carlton had relegated himself to the couch without any direction from her. Juliet had lain awake in bed, staring at the ceiling in the gray light and waiting. When the clock had rolled over from 12:59 to 1:00, she finally broke and went to find him. He was sound asleep on the couch, blanket tossed over his feet and a spare pillow from the linen closet under his head. The TV hadn't even been on.

Juliet, who was exhausted herself, had somehow managed to wedge herself between his side and the back of the couch without waking him and had promptly fallen asleep. The next morning she told him as bluntly as possible that their bedroom was _their bedroom_ , and even when she was mad at him, that didn't give her exclusive rights to a space that they shared. If one of them was angry enough to need space, fine, "but just because we fight doesn't mean I'm kicking you out, Carlton. Okay? Did that make it into your head?"

She'd still had to retrieve him from the couch on one subsequent occasion, but honestly, after that she'd thought he'd gotten the idea. Apparently not, though, because he wasn't home, he _still_ wasn't home, and the realization that how much she missed him was softening her anger made her angry all over again. She finally drifted off when she realized he wasn't planning on returning, but her sleep was fitful.

The next morning she called him twice before work. No answer. It was a Friday, he would have to be at work—wouldn't he? He'd better be, and then they could come home together and he could hold still while she vented at him and maybe she would hold a grudge until Sunday, but they'd still go to sleep in the same bed and by Monday morning everything would be back to normal.

It wasn't like her to even want to hold a grudge, either, but there'd never been an occasion when the balance of responsibility had been so thoroughly tipped in one direction. Their fights were almost always the result of two stubborn people butting heads or miscommunicating, but here and now? Juliet was one hundred percent the wounded party, and that was pissing her off even more.

When she drove to work, she did not listen to the radio. Her head ached.

He wasn't there—of course he wasn't. Vick looked puzzled that Juliet had to ask. "He and Kekoa are making the rounds on the Winwood case," she said. "I believe they're talking to the brother-in-law's parole officer right now. Is everything...?"

"Everything's great, I just overslept," Juliet fibbed, and then retreated before Vick could ask any more questions.

She opened her monthly statistics report, put her cursor in the correct cell to update it, and then ended up doodling a unicorn on her legal pad. She added a couple of rifles, just because that was the kind of mood she was in, and then gave the unicorn's mane a few embellishments. It was, to be frank, the most productive part of her day. That her personal life was interfering with her ability to do her job made her even grumpier; she didn't usually let her mood affect her ability to concentrate, which was, after all, one of the more important traits in a police detective.

On the way home she stopped at her favorite bakery and bought one of their famous monster brownies. It wasn't until she was in her kitchen and automatically set out two forks that she realized Carlton wasn't around to split the brownie with her. She ate the entire thing herself and took a two-hour angry nap, the kind of nap that left her feeling even more tired when she woke. She felt like she had some kind of rage hangover, although it was hard to tease that out from the other feeling, the one she was reluctant to name but that was definitely, definitely a bone-deep sense of missing her partner.

At nine o'clock, after she had half-heartedly finished a few chores and wholeheartedly wallowed while sitting on the floor of the kitchen and petting one of her cats, she gave in and called Shawn. Carlton clearly had no plans to return home ( _to her_ ) anytime soon, and Juliet was starting to suspect there was more going on here than posturing between dumb boys. He'd always been so careful of her career and her reputation in the past, he'd been the one to bear the brunt of repercussions for an office relationship, and for him to up and leave her like this—

Shawn didn't pick up. Juliet sighed, decided calling Carlton one more time would be too desperate, picked herself up off the floor, and went to get dressed again.

The lights were on at Psych, but the sign was flipped to 'CLOSED' and nobody answered when she knocked. When she peered through the front window, she caught the flicker of the TV. They'd probably fallen asleep watching a _Futurama_ marathon; she could pound hard enough to wake them up, but then she weighed the collective common sense of the occupant private investigators versus their tendency to be easily distracted. In other words, the door was unlocked, and Juliet let herself inside.

Gus and Shawn were slumped in their side-by-side recliners, both asleep. Gus was holding a bowl of popcorn; Shawn's mouth was open, and he was drooling a little. In her less honest moments, Juliet liked to pretend that this was the reason she and Shawn hadn't worked—he already had his soulmate, after all. In her more honest moments, she could admit that what had been a sweet flirtation between a young novice and a consultant faltered against the constancy she had found once she'd become more secure in who and what she was. She still felt a little guilty about using Shawn, but they were taking slow steps to restoring their friendship, this hiccup aside.

"Hey," she said. "Shawn? Shawn!"

He kept drooling. Juliet thought about throwing popcorn at him—actually, it was tempting to draw on his face and maybe do something involving Gus's hands and shaving cream—but she was too upset to seriously consider pranking them.

She kicked his chair instead. He bolted upright like she'd taken a taser to his neck.

"Don't forget Mr. Ed's peanut butter!" he shouted.

"Shawn?" Juliet waved her hand in front of his face. "It's Juliet, not Mr. Ed."

"Oh. Hey, Jules," Shawn said.

"Sorry to wake you up, but I had a couple of questions—"

"Crud. This is about the thing with Lassie, isn't it? Oh god, are you going to hurt me? Don't take it out on Gus, Jules, he had nothing to do with this, and remember that if you seriously maim me, you're hurting him, too."

"I'm not going to maim you, Shawn." She squinted. "Well, probably. I am disappointed, but honestly, right now I'm more worried about Carlton."

"Lassie?"

"Yes. Lassiter. Is Gus going to—"

"No way, he'll sleep through anything." Shawn leaned forward and muted the TV. "Is Lassie still pissed?"

"That depends," said Juliet. "Does he still have something to be pissed about?"

And that was the crux of the matter. A little recon before she stepped onto the minefield that was Carlton's emotional landscape was necessary, sure, but Juliet had other motives, too; Nadine hadn't been particularly specific in her description other than to say that Shawn and Carlton had fought, and that it had been about Juliet.

Shawn scrubbed at his face, and when he looked back up, he was wearing the flat, serious expression she'd only seen on him a handful of times, and usually in dire circumstances.

"Yeah," said Shawn. "Yeah, he does. I'm not the only one at fault here, but I said some things that crossed the line, and—" He frowned, shook his head. "And as soon as I have a guarantee that he isn't going to shoot me on sight, I plan on making it up to him. And maybe on putting that giant squirrel costume back into storage for another year—"

"What kinds of things?"

"Excusez moi?"

"What kinds," Juliet repeated, "of things."

"Nadine didn't tell you?"

"Shawn, I'm interested in your version."

"I...yeah. Can we do this in the kitchen? I could go for a hot chocolate with those itty-bitty marshmallows." He pushed himself to his feet without waiting for permission, and Juliet followed him to the kitchenette with her arms folded over her chest. When he reached for the saucepan she raised an eyebrow and glared, a technique she had only recently perfected, and he switched the saucepan for a mug, turned off the stove, and opened the microwave.

He didn't talk until he'd finished dumping half the container of cocoa powder in with his milk; it kept his hands busy, Juliet realized.

"I was telling him that I had some case-specific information, he was telling me to back off, you know all the steps to that dance," Shawn said. He alternated stirring clockwise and counterclockwise apparently at random. "We both started ugly-yelling, at which point I may or may not have blurted that I liked him fine until he took you away."

Juliet opened her mouth before she even knew what she was going to say, but Shawn cut her off. "Come on, Jules, let me get this all out, okay? Uncomfortable personal conversations are so much not my thing unless they're about someone else. Where was—oh, right. And then Lassie told me that you were only using me to get over _him_ , which, ouch, arrow to the heart. Not that I didn't know something was up with you two—hello, I am California's premier psychic—but having it all spelled out was almost as much fun as going to the dentist."

Juliet's throat burned. Vodka-burn, tequila-burn, _whiskey_ -burn, like she'd taken two shots and then forgotten to breathe.

"Go on," she said.

"I thought he was going to hit me," Shawn admitted. "I...hit first. Well, kind of, there was no karate montage or anything, but I may have insinuated certain things. About your—about how he was your superior, and how he's older that you are, and possibly certain things about his job performance, you know what, it's all a bit of a blur."

Even when their relationship had been _strictly_ defined as field partners, Juliet had often found herself biting back an impulse to lash out at anyone who took aim at Carlton. That instinct had only strengthened over the years, and now she had to look away from Shawn and count backwards from thirty to stifle her need to attack. Carlton may have used her relationship with him as a weapon, but Shawn had escalated the fight to the point that she was now sleeping alone. No wonder Carlton was hurting.

When she looked back up, Shawn had finally stopped fiddling with his hot chocolate. "For—" He cleared his throat. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. He did the right thing, making me walk away."

"I'll tell him that when I find him," Juliet said.

"He's not talking to _you?"_ said Shawn. "Oh buddy boy, he is still pissed. But, uh, Jules—I know I came across like I'm still hung up on you, but." He shrugged a shoulder. "I don't begrudge you and Lassiter what you have. I can't even call it a surprise."

"Thanks," Juliet said, and found herself meaning it. "You really need to apologize to him, though, not me."

"Yeah," said Shawn, "well, like I said—I don't mind saying I'm sorry, but I'd also like to walk away with my face intact."

"I'll give you an all-clear after I've talked with him," she said.

"You do that. I, meanwhile, will pick out a tasteful greeting card. Something that expresses abject sorrow and maybe a piquant of regret. Maybe I'll just...drop that in the mail and spend the next week in my safehouse." He released a handful of marshmallows over his cup; they stuck together in one big clump, and Shawn frowned and smashed them down with his thumb.

Juliet left him there and went home.

-

She felt...exhausted, honestly. When she walked through the door, she didn't even bother turning on any lights; she locked the door behind herself, crawled into bed, and pulled the blankets up around her neck.

Carlton didn't precisely have his own side—they both started out on whichever side was nearest and ended up more-or-less in the center of the bed—but he did have his own nightstand, which was differentiated from her nightstand mostly by which kind of revolver was stored in the drawer. She rolled on her side to face it; there was a book resting on the top, and she didn't need any light to know it was about John and Abigail Adams and that it was marked halfway through with a post-it note. He never used regular bookmarks, because, he claimed, they always fell out of the book and made him lose his spot. Privately, she thought he was just too much of a cheap-ass to pay for a bookmark.

That wasn't helping her sleep at all. She rolled over on her other side. Her nightstand was clean except for the lamp and her phone; when closing her eyes and counting backwards from fifty didn't work, she sighed, groped for the phone, and starting going through her old text messages.

The really embarrassing part was that she still saved everything Carlton sent her—and not out of practicality, but because...because...well, it wasn't like she had any love letters to save in a shoebox. And she'd had to work hard to bullying him into texting her. He was a complete luddite, more by choice than because he was incapable of learning new technology, and she still sent him probably four messages for every one she received, but he'd finally unbent enough to hold conversations with her.

On Monday morning, while she was waiting at a parole hearing, he'd sent her a picture of a new model of Kevlar vest—stab-resistant, since that was always her first question. On Monday afternoon, when the hearing let out, she'd gotten a picture of Buzz holding his new puppy with the addendum, _Don't get any ideas, O'Hara._

He was always surprising her like that.

The mattress shifted as one of the cats leaped up beside her. There was a soft huff, and then a warm weight settled at the small of her back. Thumper, probably, since Flower preferred—oh, here she was, too. She sprawled out on the other half of Juliet's pillow. Juliet had to make a few adjustments so she didn't end up with a cat's butt in her face, but when Flo had settled, she was laying almost nose-to-nose with Juliet.

Juliet blindly dropped her phone back on the nightstand and occupied her hand with petting Flo's head instead. The cat's rumbling purr started up almost immediately, but even that wasn't enough to lull her to sleep.

He'd always surprised her, from the very beginning. Even her first day with the SBPD—Vick had called him in to introduce Juliet to her new partner, and he'd been in full Lassiter tantrum. He'd snapped at Vick, barely made eye contact with Juliet, and rushed away before she could finish introducing herself. He was back a few minutes later to herd her into a car. Juliet, by that point, was incredulous, both of his behavior and that Vick was willing to indulge him. He spent the whole drive muttering into the handset, too, without a single word of explanation to her.

She'd been surprised when they swerved to a stop in front of a cozy split-level in an older neighborhood. There were a couple of patrol cars in the driveway, and the front door was wide open. They were barely past the threshold when an entire fleet of vehicles started to arrive outside—an ambulance, more patrol cars, _news vans_...

There were officers inside, huddled around a little boy who couldn't have been more than four. He was curled into the corner of a couch, and even the gentle coaxing from the enormously tall officer she'd met at her orientation didn't seem to be having any effect.

Lassiter had cut through the crowd, crouched down in front of the boy, and said, "Hey, kid, your parents are outside. You want to see them?"

There was a pause, and then the kid had uncurled himself, and, slowly, nodded. He allowed Lassiter to haul him upright and take him outside—and Juliet, in a rush of anger, had realized that was what Lassiter had wanted. The film crews had already set up on the lawn, and he'd gotten to come out of the house holding what was obviously a kidnapped kid. He'd wanted the hero shot. That more than anything had cemented her opinion of him as a total asshole.

She'd been torn between frustration and horror as she trailed him around the rest of the day. He talked to the parents, set the kid up in the ambulance, hammed it up for the news crews, and orchestrated a thorough investigation of the house, and through it all Juliet fumed. The biggest problem was that she didn't have any recourse—she'd left Miami to escape a bad situation, and while this was certainly a different flavor of moronic power-tripping, she didn't think it was one she wanted to tolerate for long. An incompetent detective who did none of the work and swooped in at the last minute to claim all the glory was _not_ who she wanted for a partner, and Vick had said Lassiter was the finest the department had to offer...

At the end of the day the tall, friendly officer—she learned his name was Buzz McNab—had invited her out for celebratory drinks. Juliet, figuring she might as well try to salvage something out of the wreckage of the day, had accepted; Lassiter, she'd been pleased to see, had either declined or hadn't been invited at all. They'd taken her to what had clearly been a cop bar, and that, at least, had been familiar. It was easy to get so keyed up after the completion of a big case that sleep or any kind of normalcy was impossible without a few hours to adjust, and the mood was high that evening. She appreciated the camaraderie.

After the first round, one of the other junior detectives started talking about how long she'd been awake, and then they started trying to top each other. "Sixteen hours," the detective said, and then someone else said they'd worked twenty-two straight manning the tip line, and then they started talking about critical windows in kidnappings until Buzz broke in to say, "Come on, guys, like we have anything to brag about—Detective Lassiter's been going for at least...geez, fifty-seven hours, and you know he's the one who cracked this."

There had been some muttering, and a few people had rolled their eyes, but Juliet was shocked at how many people were nodding in agreement, and then the junior officer who had started the conversation lifted her bottle and said, "To Detective Lassiter."

And she'd sat there and watched as half the department toasted him in his absence; that was when she'd started to think she'd misjudged him.

Their early partnership had been nothing but a series of missteps in the same vein. Juliet had been learning his true depths at the same time she was drawing clear lines regarding how she was willing to let herself be treated, at the same time she was learning her job from the ground up, and at the same time she was proving, to the world at large but mostly to _him_ , exactly how competent she could be. In her defense, Carlton was an easy man to misjudge; there were so many layers of bluster and sourness and cynicism and _strangeness_ to crack, and she doubted anyone else had exerted the same effort she had in wearing him down.

Which didn't change the fact that he owed her an apology, but at this point Juliet's primary purpose was simply to get him home and make him stay there.

"He's impossible," she said out loud. Flower purred at her.

"Oh, like you're any better," Juliet retorted, and then she forced herself to close her eyes. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

-

She was up before the sun. Carlton often picked up a Saturday morning shift, either because he was juggling a lot of cases or because Juliet herself was busy, but that still didn't give her a whole lot of time to track him down and position herself. 

She started with a cup of coffee and the computer—not hers, because her laptop was the cheap one she'd bought five years ago as a broke new hire still bowed under the weight of student loans, but Carlton's, because he had a new Macbook that he'd barely bothered to learn to use. While Juliet's first instinct would be to retreat to a friend's spare room, she doubted that would provide Carlton with the degree of privacy and autonomy he liked, which meant hotel or motel. His priority would be price first, so she cut her list to the cheaper options. His second concern would probably be cleanliness; even though he'd sleep on the ground happily for one of his civil war reenactments, she didn't think he would tolerate bed bugs or mold if he didn't have to.

That left her with a list of six candidates and three less likely possibilities. Two were closer to work, one was near an outdoor shooting range she knew he liked, and another that would have been Juliet's pick was within walking distance to the shore, but knowing Carlton, he'd be at the motel closest to home.

If he stuck to his usual routine, she had forty minutes to drive past parking lots before he left for work. By the time she got dressed, it was more like twenty-five, but she didn't need even that long; his car was at the first place she looked, an independently operated motel eight minutes from their house.

It was called 'The Moonrock Motel,' and even though the advertised amenities were air conditioning and working showers, it was in decent repair, tucked under an overpass but not particularly close to any exits; the main building block backed up to a thicket of woods, but the road opposite the highway was lined with a cluster of buildings that included a mechanic, a video rental store, and a Chinese grocer, and then turned into residential lots. Carlton was parked outside of room thirty-two. She had to bite back hard against the impulse to knock on his door until he came outside and talked to her.

Instead, she parked behind the grocery store, went inside, and bought a muffin. From there she crossed the street to the mechanic's; the garage wasn't open yet, but someone was inside the office doing paperwork. Juliet held up her muffin and pointed to the bench beside the building; she received an idle wave in return, and she took that as license to sit down and unwrap her breakfast.

The bench offered a pretty good line-of-sight to the motel's parking lot; it was shaded by an overhang and blocked from view by the cars jammed in the most chaotic disarray, as in, there was seriously not a square foot of asphalt to put another vehicle outside of the garage. She broke her muffin in two out of habit, and although she ate slowly, she was still pinching together the last of the crumbs when the door to room number thirty-two opened and Carlton stepped outside.

He was wearing tan slacks and a blue shirt with no jacket and the sleeves rolled back, more casual than his usual weekday attire, and Juliet felt sure that his hair looked ruffled, even though it was too far to make out his face from where she was sitting. He scanned the parking lot—that was a cop instinct; she did it herself—and Juliet ducked down, pretending to tie her shoe. When she straightened, both he and his car were gone.

Well. That hadn't been too hard, not that she'd expected it to be. She tossed her muffin wrapper in the trash and strolled back to her car; now that she'd found her quarry's hide, all that remained was the ambush itself, and if there was one thing she was pretty good at, it was surprising Carlton Lassiter.

-

The first thing she did when she got home was go for a run. She didn't time herself, but she was out for maybe five or six miles, and she drove herself hard enough that she was winded by the end of her route. While she caught her breath, she fed the cats, stretched, and answered a couple of emails; when her heartrate was back to normal, she showered and went to get dressed.

The big decision was whether it would be easier to pick the motel door's lock and hope she wasn't seen, or flash her badge and intimidate the desk clerk into surrendering a key. One would require lockpicks, the other a pantsuit.

And Thumper, meanwhile, was watching her from his perch on the dresser with an expression of feline condescension.

"What?" said Juliet. "It's for a good cause."

Thumper appeared unswayed.

"Chief Vick would approve. Probably. Not that she needs to know about a domestic problem—"

Thumper blinked.

"Oh, come on, give me a break," Juliet said, and reached for the pantsuit.

She didn't bother putting on shoes, not yet; first she made herself lunch and forced herself to eat it, and then she did the dishes and dumped the coffee at the bottom of the pot into a mug. It was lukewarm, but she zapped it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and then took the mug with her to the windowseat at the back of the house.

She sat there for a long time, her legs pulled up under her and the cooling coffee cradled in her hands; and she thought. She thought about…all kinds of things; her own parents, and Miami, and why she had left Miami, Carlton's face before he'd walked out and his face after he'd been stabbed, where she was and where she was going. When her mind was made up, she rose, dumped the cold coffee in the sink, and left without rinsing her mug. She was still angry, but her anger was measured; she was sad, but her grief was momentary, little more than fuel for her resolve.

She did remember to put on shoes, but even that seemed minimally important.

-

The motel clerk was willing to hand over the room key right until she told him the number of the room. 

"I, uhh—I dunno if that's a good idea," he said. "Uh, ma'am. The guy who rented that room is—he might not like it if I let you in."

His eyes were red-rimmed, and there was a smell rising from him that definitely did _not_ originate with incense; Juliet suspected he had a couple of ounces of marijuana on him or hidden somewhere nearby. She leaned on the counter and lowered her voice.

"Look," she said, "I can't have this spread around, but I'm with Internal Affairs. This is pretty hush-hush, you know? Now, if you can't help me—believe me, I get that, but in that case I'll probably have to ask you to come down to the station for questioning."

"Oh. Oh!" the guy said. "Yeah, I—no, Internal Affairs. Wow. Let me just grab that key." He bolted for the back room and came back a couple of seconds later with a sturdy metal key attached to a big plastic tag stamped with the number '32.'

Juliet accepted it, told him, "Thank you for your cooperation," in her best Serious Detective Voice, and managed not to laugh only because her mood that week hadn't much lent itself to laughter. She was in.

Her car was across the street behind the grocery store again, and she was careful to lock the door behind herself so she didn't give away the game too early. It took her a couple of minutes to adjust to the dim lighting; she stood there, blinking hard, until the shadows resolved into shapes, and then she started snooping.

The bathroom, to her immediate right, was first; she flipped on the lights and found it small but reasonably clean, although there was a wet towel on the floor. Carlton's shaving kit and toothbrush were laid out on the sink. Opposite the bathroom was an open closet with a couple of cheap wire hangers next to a suit; he'd been home while she was out sometime in the past two days, because the suit wasn't the one he kept at the office for emergencies. 

His duffel bag was sitting on the chest of drawers beside a TV; when she flipped the TV on, she found it set to the Discovery Channel. She turned it off again, unwilling to break this ritual with white noise, and opened one of the drawers. It was empty. On the ground in front of the chest was a trash bag with—she stuck her hand inside—a dirty t-shirt and a pair of his boxer-briefs.

The bed was rumpled, but the blankets had been pulled up. To one side sat a nightstand, clear except for Carlton's phone charger and the gun lockbox she suspected he hadn't used at all; on the other side was a small refrigerator, the kind that were ubiquitous in college dorms, with a few apples and a bag of chips sitting on top. There were two microwave burritos and a solitary can of beer inside.

Last of all she went digging through the trashcan. She found, at first, the expected: an apple core, an empty chip bag, a shopping list with "apples" and "chips" written in familiar handwriting. Underneath that she found a receipt, which was surprising, because Carlton was a tyrant about shredding anything with personal information on it, but on closer inspection she realized the receipt wasn't his at all—it was for a beauty salon, for one thing, and the last four digits of the credit card didn't match any of his. Below that was a popsicle stick, and, at the very bottom, a crumpled sheet of paper. Juliet smoothed that out on the nightstand; it looked like the beginning of a letter to her.

There was a couple of apologies that had been started and then scratched out, and a line that said that "this"—whatever "this" meant—was for the better. At the bottom, he'd written, "We both know that you deserve," before trailing off into nothingness.

"Crap," Juliet said out loud, and then, because it felt good to say so, added, "You idiot."

She sat down on the bed, and then took off her shoes, because she still had a little bit of time before he'd be leaving work. She didn't mean to fall asleep. The transition was seamless; one minute was looking at his note and the next she was waking to the sound of his key in the lock.

She pushed herself up on one elbow and rubbed at her eyes; when the door finally swung open, she was still disoriented, but not nearly as disoriented as Carlton, who caught sight of her and stopped dead.

"O'Hara," he said. He was carrying a six-pack of beer and a plastic bag that probably held more frozen burritos.

"How do you heat those?" Juliet said. "There isn't a microwave in here."

He looked down at the bag and said, "They have one in the office. How did you get in here?"

"I lied to the management," said Juliet. A flash of approval passed over his face, there and gone again, although Juliet doubted he'd be quite so impressed with casual lawbreaking initiated by anyone other than her. She sat up all the way, so she could rub at her eyes with both hands; when he realized she wasn't planning on saying anything else, he went to the refrigerator and stuck his beer and burritos inside. By the time she'd wiped the last of the crust away, he was leaning against the radiator, arms crossed, probably glaring. Juliet turned on the bedside lamp. Yep; definitely glaring.

"We need to talk," Juliet said.

"Great."

"And you owe me an apology." 

He didn't look away when he heard that, although, impossibly, his shoulders tensed even more. He was one big coil of stress, that much was obvious.

When he responded, it was mechanical, almost rote, but Juliet could tell he meant it. The note she'd found in the trash indicated as much; she still wanted to make sure he understood why he owed her an apology, though.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I need you to just...listen to me for a second, because I need this addressed before we can move on to anything else, including how much it terrifies me that you walked out like that." She took a deep breath. "I think you know the main reason I'm so angry—no matter what the state of our relationship is, Carlton, I can't...I don't deserve to be argued over like some war prize, especially not at my—at _our_ —workplace. It's chauvinistic, it's offensive, and it damages both of our reputations."

"I know, O'Hara," he said, toneless. "It won't happen again."

"Good. I trust you when you say it won't," she said. "The other problem is that...I can't have you using our relationship like a weapon like that. Not against Shawn, not against anyone. We've both fought pretty hard to get where we are, and it hurts me to see you demean that. Does that make sense?"

He looked hard at her, and she could tell he was, maybe for the first time, really focusing on her; a muscle low on the right side of his jaw jumped a couple of times, and then he said, "I...hadn't thought of it in those terms."

"Yeah, that was what set me off," Juliet said. "I...thank you for listening. I know we have more to work through than just that, but I wanted to let you know why I reacted the way I did before we get into everything else—"

"Don't bother," Carlton interrupted. "Look, O'Hara, you were right to ask for an apology. I owed you that much, but frankly, it's time for both of us to move on."

"...What?" Juliet said, bewildered; she had expected this or something like it, but to hear him lay it out, a naked option, no, a naked _resolution_ , was a blow she couldn't absorb.

"People have sex, they move in with each other, it doesn't work out, and everybody moves on," he said. "It's blatant that you and I are too different to make this work in the long term. No need to drag it out." Oh, that was a load of bullcrap—Carlton was the _king_ of 'dragging it out.'

"So what, that's it? You don't care about me anymore?" Juliet was swinging more to incredulity than grief.

"I didn't say that—"

"Please, you might as well—"

"That point is that we're at different stages in life, O'Hara, and we want different things." He was doing that thing where he tried to go flat and logical on her, and Juliet was pretty sure that 'flat and logical' was the least genuine reaction Carlton had ever had to conflict in his life. She'd feel a lot better if they were screaming at each other and one or both of them were crying.

"Different stages? Different _stages?_ Oh my god. I seriously cannot believe you swallowed that filth Shawn was spewing—"

"You can't tell me it doesn't bother you!" he snapped. "You make comments about it all the time—"

"Excuse me? I joke about it to let you know that I don't care! So what, we aren't the same age, it isn't like you have one foot in the grave, and twelve years is not—"

"Thirteen years," he said.

"Twelve and a half—"

 _"Almost_ thirteen—"

"I don't care, Carlton! And I swear, you are not going to use this as a reason to leave me, if I have to handcuff you and march you to a therapist I am not letting you use what you falsely think is an inadequacy—"

"For fuck's sake, O'Hara, it isn't just about the age, you should be with someone more temperamentally suited to you—"

"Fuck you, you don't get to make that decision!" That, at least, served the purpose of shutting him up; he was gaping at her, the same way he did any time she swore. While it was true she didn't feel comfortable peppering her conversation with strong language unless she was really mad, he didn't have to look at her like she'd invented the word, so she said, "Fuck," again. Her face was hot, and her throat was tight. She hated that reaction.

"And of course I don't hold Shawn to the same standard," she said. "Nobody else is in the same position you are to hurt me, of course I'm going to hold my partner to a higher standard for how he treats me—and you moron, you're the one who made me realize that was how things should be, and you can either stay in this stupid motel room and I'll move in with you or you can come home."

He ran a hand down the back of his head. "Those are my only two options."

"I might not talk to you if you stay in the motel room," she said. "And forget sex, you're on your own."

"No cat hair in the motel room."

"But home has more amenities."

"Yeah?"

"Air conditioning, working shower, and a refrigerator big enough to hold more than six cans of beer and two frozen burritos," Juliet said. She hesitated, and then added, "And me."

"And you," he agreed. He looked at the wall and blinked hard a couple of times. She could tell he was still rattled; she was pretty rattled herself, and she wasn't sure how to make him understand that she valued him not despite but _because_ he was crotchety and awkward and devoted to the point of insanity. That was another thing he'd taught her to embrace, how to love someone for their flaws. It had been a slow lesson, one he'd demonstrated by appreciating her occasional violent outbursts, her total engrossment with undercover work, her tendency to make trust a non-issue even though it was a trait she prized, her weird color-coded notes and her insistence that arriving early and arriving late were equally rude and how she talked to her cats and the way she put herself into her work to an embarrassing degree.

"Can I tell you something?" Juliet said. "You're probably going to laugh at me, it's sappy and ridiculous and...but I don't know how else to get through your hard head how important you are to me, how important all of this is to me."

"I clearly can't stop you from doing anything," he said, but his arms were braced against the radiator rather than folded over his chest. Juliet slid off the bed, balanced herself against his shoulder, and said something in his ear that she wouldn't have felt comfortable telling anyone else. She was barely comfortable telling _him_ , but then she drew away, and he twisted to look at her; when he spoke, his voice was rough.

"Juliet," he said, "why would I ever laugh at that?"

And that was why she no longer minded stepping into empty air without preparation, without security, without any idea of the shape her fall would take; if he ever failed to catch her, it was only because he was falling right along with her. She reached out to touch his face, and then she said, "I don't know, there might be some kind of generational difference about humor here, and I noticed you didn't have your ear-trumpet so I wasn't sure you could hear—"

"Christ, O'Hara," he said, but he wasn't trying very hard to scowl, or at least not more than Juliet was trying to smirk.

"Hey. Come here," Juliet said, and tugged him back to the bed. He let her push him back against the headboard, and then lifted his arm obligingly as she crawled up and positioned herself next to him.

"Remember when we were chasing that guy who was killing tourists and selling their organs through a gift shop?" she said.

"It was an antique store," he said.

"It was—huh, maybe it was an antique store," Juliet said. "Anyway, he was behind that folding screen, and you thought you had a bead on him, and then I caught sight of his partner in a mirror."

"You told me to duck," he said.

"And you ducked, even though you thought it meant throwing away your chance at taking down the perp." 

"And that, boys and girls, is how I avoided being stabbed the first time. Yeah, I remember. What's your point?"

"This is…" Juliet trailed off, trying to figure out how she could put this in a way that would make sense to him. She realized she was still wearing her suit jacket; it was wrinkled and covered with lint, and one of the arms was twisted in a way that was completely uncomfortable.

"This is like that," she said. "I get that you have reasons to believe our relationship is going to fall apart, and that your experiences have taught you that other people aren't as dependable as you are, but I need you to trust that I can see where this is going even if you can't."

"Yes," he said.

"Yes?"

"Yes. Loathe as I am to admit this, O'Hara, part of the reason my marriage to Victoria fell apart—and in retrospect, there wasn't any other way it could go, we were never going to make each other giddy—wasn't my dependability but my lack thereof. I gave her presents, I said all the right things, but I was obsessed with my job—"

"No!" said Juliet. "That doesn't sound like you at all."

He ignored her. "I was obsessed with my job, and I never really made myself available to her." And then he continued, in a lowered voice, "I'm not willing to take how easily you understand me for granted. If you tell me that I'm in the dark and need to follow you, then yes, O'Hara, I will follow."

"Thank you."

"What else?"

She thought about that while she picked lint from the hotel blanket off her pants. "You need to fight for this," she said. "I mean, you have fought for it, but I need you to accept that I'm in this for the long haul, and I need you to fight for us, because...I've seen what happens when you fight for something you really believe in."

"Done," he said, and sealed it with a kiss. His hair was definitely ruffled, and she noticed that he was scruffy; he usually shaved before they...well.

"Good, let's go," she said, and shoved him off the bed. "Come on, Carlton, up!"

"O'Hara, what the—"

"Here, take this." She flung her key at him. "We have to get you packed, do you need to pay or did you give them your card?" She started shoving things in his duffel bag—the dirty clothes, the entire suit, the six-pack, the lockbox. Her shoes were beside the bed; she put them on while hopping her way to the bathroom, where she bundled his toothbrush and razor up in a handtowel and dumped them on top of the six-pack.

"There we go," she said. "Anyway else? No? You know what, why don't you worry about checking out later, I'm sure they won't mind." She got behind Lassiter, who was still standing dumbstruck, and pushed him at the door. He managed to open it on his own, and then she lifted his car keys from his pocket, unlocked the Fusion, and shoved his bag in the backseat.

"We'll come back for my car, too," she said brightly, and then coerced him into the passenger side. It was possible that she sang the Batman theme to herself on the ride home; she definitely drove like she was in the Batmobile, and thank god they didn't run into any patrol cars. When the pulled into the driveway, she was out of her seat and to the front door before Carlton even unbuckled his seatbelt. He came up behind her grousing, although he sounded more amused than grumpy.

"I don't know what this is about, but you were going fifteen over—"

"I'm a lawbreaker now," Juliet said, and then, after swinging the front door open, she yanked him inside, pushed him up against the wall, went up on the tips of her toes, and kissed him.

"Important note, this is—wait," she said, and stopped unbuttoning his shirt. "Are the blinds closed?"

"The front _door_ isn't even closed," Carlton said. His fingers had maneuvered themselves inside the waistband of her slacks anyway.

Juliet kicked out, missed, and kicked again; the door slammed shut, and Carlton backed her up against it, threw the deadbolt, and used the opportunity to lick a line up her throat.

"Okay," Juliet said, "but you should know this is only welcome-home sex, the make-up sex is a separate occasion—"


End file.
